I should mention that I have read the manpages regarding BLESS but do not understand them.

I'd appreciate a human explanation/solution

UPDATE:
Thanks tomkukins ... I tried that  my $RS = $Conn->Execute( "$query" ) or $Response->Write($query);
and found that there is indeed a problem there

I'll update again later to fully explain the answer to the problem once i figure it out exactly

UPDATE #2:
the Execution of the query was not occuring correctly bcause of the SQL syntax.
it appears that one is not allowed to put brackets around the list of fields one wants returned by SQL server.
thanks agian to tomkins for helping me sort out my error